Mike Huckabee on Immigration

Former Republican AR Governor

Take care of jobless Americans rather than save Syrians

What we do know is that only one out of five of the so called, "Syrian Refugees" were actually Syrian. If we're going to do something for the Syrians, let's help build an encampment for them, but closer to where they live,
rather than bringing them here when they don't know the language. My number one concern right now is taking care of the fact that Americans are taking it in the gut without jobs. Many working two and three part time jobs.

Source: Fox Business/WSJ Second Tier debate
, Nov 10, 2015

Give DREAMers legal status & let them apply for citizenship

Huckabee has opposed any comprehensive immigration plan that gives most undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. His 2007 immigration plan bolstered border security and required anyone in the country illegally to register with authorities and leave
the country within 120 days. When it comes to immigrants who were brought here illegally as children, often called DREAMers, Huckabee believes they should have a legal status and be able to apply for citizenship.

Source: PBS News Hour "2016 Candidate Stands" series
, May 5, 2015

2006: rational path to citizenship; 2015: no amnesty

Eight years ago, the former Arkansas governor voiced support for a path to citizenship. But more recently, Huckabee has drawn away from that broad support. "Gov. Mike Huckabee thanks God every day we live in a country that people are trying to break
into, instead of break out of," a spokesperson said. "Gov. Huckabee strongly opposes amnesty and government benefits for illegal immigrants who violated our laws and believes that immigration reform should start with repealing Obama's unconstitutional
executive orders and securing our border."

Compare that comment with what Huckabee said in 2006: "The rational approach is to find a way to give people a pathway to citizenship. You shouldn't ignore the law or ignore those who break it. But by the
same token, I think it's a little disingenuous when I hear people say they should experience the full weight of the law in every respect with no pathway, because that's not something we practice in any other area of criminal justice in this country."

Let illegal immigrant kids in college despite parents' crime

Q: As a governor, you supported a bill that would have allowed undocumented immigrants to receive in-state tuition benefits. And you've defended that position a number of times. In 2010 you said, "Is an undocumented immigrant better off going to college
and becoming a neurosurgeon or a banker or whatever he might be come and becoming a taxpayer, and in the process, to apply for and achieve citizenship? Or should we make him pick tomatoes?" Do you still feel the same way?

HUCKABEE: Absolutely.
Look, we force people to go to school in our states. So as a governor, we had a kid in one of the largest high schools in the state who was the valedictorian. He came here when he was 5 years old. He had gone through the entire public school system.
And then the big question was: Should he qualify, having been an Arkansas student, for the same scholarships that anyone else did? And I said yes, he should. Because you don't punish a child for something his parents did.

We're a better country if we allow scholarships for illegals

When the candidates debated in Michigan on October 9, 2007, and some offered upbeat assessments of the economy, Mike Huckabee dissented. "A lot of people are going to watch this debate. They're going to hear Republicans on this stage talk about how
great the economy is," he said. "And frankly, when they hear that, they're going to probably reach for the dial. I want to make sure people understand that for many people on this stage the economy's doing terrifically well, but for a lot of
Americans it's not doing so well."

He offered contrary views on trade and stood up for an Arkansas program that allowed the children of illegal immigrants to apply for college scholarships. When Romney attacked the program, Huckabee cut him down. "I'm
standing here tonight because I got an education. If I hadn't had the education, I wouldn't be standing on this stage. I might be picking lettuce. In all due respect, we're a better country than to punish children for what their parents did."

Illegal immigrants must go home and start over

The people who are here would have to go to the back of the line and start over. It’s not to be cruel. It’s to make that everybody living in our boundaries lives in the light, not the darkness, and doesn’t run and hide every time they see a police car.
We owe it not just to the people who have waited in line a long time, but also those who do want to live and work here, and create a system that is legal, that makes sense and actually protects our borders but protects the dignity & worth of every person

Build a border fence within 18 months of taking office

Q: In order to curb illegal immigration, do you support making changes in the law that would give citizenship only to children who are born to parents who are legally in this country at the time the child is born?

A: The Supreme Court has already ruled
on that. The real issue is, that doesn’t fix the problem. What we’ve got to do is to have a secure border fence, something I have proposed that we do within 18 months of taking office. If we don’t have a secure fence and have just this open door that
people can come in and out at will, we’re never going to deal with this issue effectively and responsibly. And today, many Americans are angry not that people want to come here -- and I’m going to say it again -- people in this country are grateful to
God they’re in a land that people are trying to break into and not one they’re trying to break out of. So it’s not that we’re building a fence so we can keep our people in or keep people out, but that people who do come here would have to come legally.

Build a border fence using American labor & materials

We must make more progress to protect fundamental freedoms here at home: We must build a border security fence along our Southern border, by a date certain, using American labor and American materials.
No holes, no loopholes, and no amnesty for illegals.

Source: Response to 2008 State of the Union address
, Jan 28, 2008

FactCheck: Yes, supported scholarships for AR illegal aliens

Romney’s Iowa TV ad portrays Romney’s immigration stance as hard-line compared with Huckabee’s. It’s true that a plan Huckabee supported would have granted in-state tuition rates and eligibility for scholarships to any student who had attended an Arkansa
public high school for at least three years, regardless of immigration status. It’s also true that Romney vetoed a similar bill in 2004. But Romney’s illegal immigrant bashing is of fairly recent vintage.

In 2004, the Boston Globe reported that
Romney was reluctant to veto the tuition proposal--and not at all the certain, sure-footed decision maker portrayed in the ad. At the time, Romney said, “I hate the idea of in any way making it more difficult for kids, even those who are illegal aliens,
to afford college in our state.”

Romney wasn’t a hardliner on immigration until late in his tenure as governor. None of the specifics presented here are false, but the ad presents a black-and-white contrast that doesn’t exist in reality.

Pathway to citizenship must start at back of line, out of US

Q: You put out a new immigration plan calling for building a border fence, cracking down on employers, & telling illegals to go home. But last year, you said “the rational approach is to find a way to give people a pathway to citizenship.” In your new
plan, the only path is to go home & to get on the back of the line. Why the change?

A: I don’t think there’s an inconsistency. When I said a pathway, I didn’t say what the pathway was. I now believe that the only thing the American people are going to
accept--and, frankly, the only thing that really makes sense--is a pathway that sends people back to the starting point.

Q: That would take years.

A: No, I don’t agree. Look, if we can get a credit card application done within hours, it shouldn’t
take years to get a work permit to come here and pick lettuce. So part of my plan is that we seal the borders. You don’t have amnesty and sanctuary cities. You do have a pathway to get back here legally that would take days, maybe weeks, not years.

Send illegals home so all in US can hold their heads high

Let me tell you why it’s important that we have a pathway that sends people back to the starting point. Two reasons.

The American people say, “Do something. Do it now. We don’t want to have this country ignoring the illegal problem.”
I get it.

I want people who are in this country to hold their heads up high. You know, right now there are a lot of people who really are here because they’re trying to feed their families.
I don’t begrudge them that. But let’s give them a means by which they can get here through the door legally, and when they’re here they don’t have to hide, they don’t have to keep their heads down and hope nobody catches them,
they have their heads held high. Everyone living within the borders of the United States ought to do so with dignity and with a sense of pride, not a sense of fear.

Make legal immigration quick, or outsource it if we can’t

Q: What do you think should be done with the 12 million undocumented aliens that live in the US?

A: The first step is a secure border, because otherwise nothing really matters. But I do think the pathway has to include people going to the back, not
the front of the line. There can’t be an amnesty policy, because that’s an insult to all the people who waited, sometimes, ridiculously, for years, just to be able to make the transition here. If you can get an American Express card in two weeks, it
shouldn’t take seven years to get a work permit to come to this country in order to work on a farm. So if our government is incapable of making that process in that length of time, then we should do it in a way to outsource it.
And here’s why: When people come to this country, they shouldn’t fear. They shouldn’t live in hiding. They ought to have their heads up, because we believe every person ought to have his or her head up and proud.

FactCheck: AR college bill accepted illegals after 3 years

Huckabee ran afoul of the facts when defending his failed proposal to make children of illegal immigrants eligible for state college scholarships. Huckabee said eligibility required that “you’d sat in our schools from the time you’re 5 or 6 years old and
you had become an A-plus student, you completed the core curriculum, you were an exceptional student, and you also had to be drug and alcohol free, and you had to be applying for citizenship.

Actually, the bill Huckabee pushed for in 2005 required only
three years in an Arkansas high school to be eligible. And students did not have to be “applying for citizenship,” but rather they had to sign an affidavit stating their intent to do so in the future. All students who apply for state scholarships
must “certify that they are drug-free” and “pledge to refrain from alcohol” if they are under 21, just as Huckabee said. But they don’t have to be “an A-plus student”--the state requires a solid “B” average. The bill failed two votes short of passage.

Punish people who break the law; but not their children

Q: Did you support tuition breaks for children of illegal immigrants in Arkansas?

A: It wasn’t a break. What I supported, and I still do, was the idea that you don’t punish a child for the crime of a parent. I still don’t believe that.
I don’t believe that this country has reduced itself to the point that when a parent commits a crime and breaks the law, that you grind your heel in the face of 6-year-old. What I did support was when a child had been in our schools all his or her
academic career and wanted to go to college, if that student would apply for citizenship, then they would be able to go to college. It was a meritorious scholarship. Quite frankly, I would rather have them college-educated, I’d have those folks become
citizens, college-educated, paying taxes, rather than being in a position where their income was so low they ended up becoming tax-takers. We punish people who break the law. We don’t punish the children of those who break the law.

Focus on demand: penalize employers of illegal immigrants

I don’t believe the average American resents that people want to come here. We ought to thank God that we still live in a country that people are trying to break into, not one they’re trying to break out of. But you’ve got to have a secure border because
otherwise our borders are not only open to illegal immigrants, but to somebody bringing a suitcase with a dirty bomb.

But, more importantly, if we’re going to deal with the supply, you touch it at the point of the demand.
And until something is done to touch the people who are employing illegal immigrants, to create what amounts to another version of slave labor, then we’re never going to stop the flow.

You’re not going to get illegals to admit that they’re
here illegally, because they’re desperate. What we have to do is to start putting the penalty on the people who are most benefiting from them, the employers who are using those laborers in order to keep from having to pay decent wages.

Some anti-immigration advocates are based on racism

Q: Two years ago, as governor of Arkansas, you said legislation that was then before the state legislature to crack down on illegal immigration was “inflammatory and race-baiting.” Last year, you said this about opposition to immigration reform that was
then in Congress: “If I were to say some of it is driven by sheer racism, I think I would be telling you the truth.” Why do you feel some of them are racist?

A: Well, first of all, because I’ve listened to some of them.
And it’s not the concern that people are coming here for opportunities or even that they’re illegal. Look, I agree, we ought to have sealed borders. But I want to be clear: If someone is looking for a president who is going to have a mean
spirit toward other human beings, I’m not their guy. I’ll fix the borders, I’ll secure them, but what I won’t do is to do it because I’m angry at them for wanting to come here for the same reason that the rest of us love America.

People are angry at government for failing to track illegals

If someone is looking for a president who is going to have a mean spirit toward other human beings, I’m not their guy. I’ll fix the borders, but what I won’t do is to do it because I’m angry at them for wanting to come here for the same reason that the
rest of us love America. People in this country are essentially good folks. They’re not angry at immigrants who want to come here for the same reason that our ancestors came. But they’re angry at a government that has completely ignored borders and
allowed this problem to fester to the point that it’s now overrunning us in a position that people don’t even understand how to fix it.

The reality is that we track packages from UPS and FedEx every time we order from Amazon.com. And, yet, we’ve got a
government that says we don’t know what to do and how to keep up with people. If necessary, we ought to outsource this whole issue to FedEx and UPS. They seem to have a better way of keeping up with packages than our government does with people.

Problems with McCain-Kennedy: credibility; secrecy; spending

Q: The president is determined to revive [the McCain-Kennedy] immigration reform bill. John McCain says, “For us to do nothing is silent and de facto amnesty. [We need to] come together and sit down and figure out an approach to this problem.” Are you on
board with the president?

A: Not at this time. There are three basic reasons that the bill is in real trouble, particularly with Republicans. First, there’s a general lack of credibility that the American people have with government based on their
inattention to Katrina. Second, it was written in secret. Third is their almost obliviousness with overwhelming spending. And people in the Republican Party are uncomfortable with it because Ted Kennedy is involved.

Q: Just because Senator
Kennedy is on board with Senator McCain and the president, does that in and of itself make it unacceptable?

A: No. But if [Kennedy] likes it, [Republican think], whoa, there may be something hidden in there that we’re not going to like.

Allow in professionals as legal immigrants, but seal border

TANCREDO [to Huckabee}: We talk about all the immigration reform we want, and what it gets down to is this: Are we ready for a timeout? Are we actually ready to say, “Enough is enough”? We have to stop all legal immigration except for people coming into
this country as family members, immediate family members, and/or refugees.

HUCKABEE: I disagree with that. I think that there are a number of people that we should welcome into this country. Certainly engineers and doctors and scientists that we may
need legally coming here. What we need to do is to have a border that is sealed and the same kind of process that we have to go through if we go into a stadium. We go in one at a time and we have a ticket. That’s the only thing I think Americans really
are asking us for is a sane, sensible system that’s based on the idea that if you come here, that you come here through the same process that we would be expected to go through if we went to another country, which is not happening today.

Path to citizenship if illegals admit guilt & pay fine

What we cannot do is allow our laws to be flagrantly broken, acting as if the economic benefits to consumers justify their utter disregard for not only our laws, but potentially our security. In the case of immigration, our laws are clearly out of sync
with the economic realities of our global marketplace. It would be sheer folly to attempt to suddenly impose strict enforcement of existing laws, round up 12 million people, march them across the border, and expect them to stay.

What does make sense is
a revision of our laws, one giving those here illegally a process through which they pay a reasonable fine in admission of their guilt for the past infraction of violating our border laws and agree to adhere to a pathway toward legal status and
citizenship. In exchange, our government gains the capacity to know who is here, why they are here, where they are, and whether they carry a communicable disease. But much of the debate has become mired more in definitions than in a real solution.

Deport the illegal immigrants who don’t do it the right way

When we say, “Well, we can’t round these people up and take them home,” we don’t have to. You give them the option: If you don’t do it the right way and then we catch you, you would be subject to deportation. But if you do it the right way, then
you’re going to be able to live with your head up and live free in this country, properly. People can go back and start the process legally, for their benefit and for everyone else’s benefit.

Source: 2008 Facebook/WMUR-NH Republican primary debate
, Jan 5, 2006

Seal the borders in a responsible way

As Abraham Lincoln said, “If it weren’t for the honor of it, I’d just as soon pass,” when he was run out of town on a rail. The fact is, Americans are upset about this issue because they feel like we’ve violated the rule of law.
You have to secure the border and until that’s done, nothing makes sense. That ought to be done. It ought to be done with American workers, with American products, and it ought to be done immediately. 18 months ought to be the outside length of time.
It’s an issue of national security, more than it is anything else. But it’s a matter of sealing the borders of our nation in a responsible way. We ought to have a period of time in which people then return to their home country and get in the
back of the line. When people live in the US, they ought to have their head up. They ought to not live in fear. Every time they see a police car, they shouldn’t run and hide. Nobody ought to live like that in this country.

Share costs of legal immigration between states & federal.

Huckabee adopted the National Governors Association policy:

The Governors urge Congress to consider the following principles regarding immigration policies.

The decision to admit immigrants is a federal one that carries with it a firm federal commitment to shape immigration policy within the parameters of available resources we as a nation are determined to provide.

The fiscal impact of immigration decisions must be addressed by the federal government. The states, charged with implementing federal policy, have shared and are sharing in the costs; however, there should be no further shift of costs to the states.

A basic responsibility of the federal government is to collect and disseminate timely and reliable statistical information on immigration and its consequences for the United States.

Federal immigration policies should ensure that new immigrants do not become a public charge to federal, state, or local governments.

The federal government must provide adequate information to and consult with states on issues
concerning immigration decisions that affect the states.

States should not have to incur significant costs in implementing federal laws regarding immigration status as a condition of benefits.

The Governors urge the following regarding Legalization and Naturalization:

States require maximum flexibility in determining and allocating resources to meet the needs of newly legalized aliens.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) must be diligent in its efforts to ensure that felons are not naturalized and being given the benefits of citizenship rather than being deported.

The naturalization process should be streamlined to be more efficient and accessible to eligible applicants wishing to become citizens, with all the rights and responsibilities thereof.

The INS must take aggressive action to eliminate the backlog of naturalization applications, which is now approximately 800,000 nationwide.

Federal government should deal with criminal repatriation.

Huckabee adopted the National Governors Association policy:

[Regarding illegal immigration], the Governors continue to call on the federal government to negotiate and renegotiate prisoner transfer treaties to expedite the transfer of criminal aliens in the United States who are subject to deportation or removal. The negotiations for such agreements should focus on:

ensuring that the transferred prisoners serve the balance of their state-imposed prison sentence;

removing any requirement that the prisoners consent to be transferred to their countries of origin;

structuring the process to require that the prisoners serve the remainder of their original prison sentence if they return to the United States; and

considering economic incentives to encourage countries of origin to take back their criminal citizens.

Additionally, the Governors believe the federal government should:

increase the use of interior repatriation with countries contiguous to the United States;

place INS officials in state and local facilities for early identification of potentially deportable aliens - nearer the point of their illegal entry - to ensure formal deportation prior to release; and

upon the request of a state Governor, place INS officers in state courts to assist in the identification of criminal aliens pending criminal prosecution.

Finally, the Governors are concerned about the large number of deported felons that are returning to the United States. A significant number of the criminal alien felons housed in state prisons and local jails are previously convicted felons who reentered the United States after they were deported. The Governors urge the federal government to provide sufficient funds for proven positive identification systems, like the Automated Fingerprinting Identification System (AFIS), to allow for the expanded use of these systems in the rest of the nation.

Import farm workers from Mexico.

Huckabee co-sponsored the Southern Governors' Association resolution:

Whereas, agriculture, which has critical importance in the South not only to our economy, but to our regional and cultural identify and way of life, is facing rapid changes in technology and an increasing global economy; and,

Whereas, the cost of government commodity programs has varied in recent years between $5 billion and $26 billion in nominal terms, and removed acreage from production thus reducing the cost effectiveness of the program; and,

Whereas, global trade is crucial to the survival of American agriculture, calling for fair application and enforcement of current and future trade agreements to secure a level playing field for exporters of U.S. food and fiber; and,

Whereas, agricultural labor shortages, complicated by U.S. federal immigration policy, continue to plague the South, now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Southern Governors’ Association, with respect to the 2002 farm bill, urges Congress
and the Administration to:

Make commodity program payments, production agreements, limitations, and quotas, belong to and follow the producer, rather than the landowner — taking care not to violate WTO agreements;

Enact agricultural federal tax incentives — reducing local property taxes for small producers in high tax areas — so farmers can continue to farm rather than sell land for other uses as well as other tax provisions for environmental/conservation improvements, agriculture research and donations of commodities to charitable organizations;

Work together to ensure fair application of current and future trade agreements that will open the door to new foreign markets;

Implement a farm labor system, based on the agreement between Canada and Mexico, which will provide an orderly, efficient way to import farm workers.